and what of the critic who says, Kropotkin,
your “way” of turning everything into psychology means
that we have nothing solid to base our theories upon because
everything is psychologized including political theory,
history, economics and of course, philosophy…
We have no such thing as disciplines because
we have turned all disciplines into psychology…
and that is true to a certain extent anyway…
but and this is important to understand,
whereas everything is turned into psychology in
the beginning, it doesn’t end up as psychology…
let us understand the point of psychology…
we are trying to understand ourselves in terms
of actions and behavior with an understanding
of the psychologically drives and deprivations that
drive so much of our behavior…
In other words, if we cure ourselves of our psychological issues,
if we understand the forces and drives that lead to our actions
and behavior, then we have overcome, moved past those forces
and drives that dictate how we act and behave…
If I understand why I act the way I do or why I am driven to
do something, then I have overcome it, I have conquered it…
it no longer haunts me as some silent motivation that I don’t
know about or understand………I understand what that motivation
is and can overcome it by conscious decisions and actions…
let us say, for example, (this didn’t happen but is simply an
example of what would happen if this happened) for example,
I was molested as child… but I “forgot” or I drove it out of my mind
as too painful to bear as an adult, I have this tremendous weight on
my subconscious mind… it subconsciously drives all my actions even
though I am not consciously aware of it…If I become aware of it,
I can begin to do the work to overcome it…the key is to become aware
of the issue… a psychology issue that has plagued me and my actions
and behavior for a long time is resolved… I am free now…… I have cured
myself…as I am no longer bounded by this issue of the molestation,
I no longer am driven by unseen and unnoticed subconscious issues…
as I am no longer driven by this event, I have become aware of and
now in control of who I am and what are my possibilities…
the molestation has prevented me fully becoming aware
of who I was… I was a child molested and because I was not
aware of it, it had control over my actions… but because I am
now aware of it, now I am in control of my thoughts and my actions
and my behavior…
the question becomes what is next? and that is where because
we have cured ourselves we can begin the positive understanding
of who we are… we are no longer in the grips of the psychological
issues that plagued us and we can come to grips with the real philosophy
that we must engage with to become fully human…
that is not to say that being molested is the only psychological issue
that we are faced with, but the most obvious… we can have many
difficult and troubling issues psychological issues that we must face
and overcome to become ready to begin the process of real philosophical
progress……….to overcome our psychological issues is just the first step
toward being able to become who we are… the first step to being able
to understand life in a real philosophical way…………it begins with
the psychological but once we overcome that we can begin to
understand and overcome other issues like who are we and what
are our possibilities…….
the psychological is part of us, of that we cannot deny, but as we come
to an awareness and understanding it becomes a smaller and smaller
part of who we are… and it will never go away, but it can be processed
to become something we can manage or control…….and it as always, begins
with becoming aware… that is the start of everything… become aware…
everything is a process and that process never ends but it can be used to
allow progress in other area’s… we are simply a work in progress and the
progress/process goes on until the day we die…
Kropotkin